Dangers and Lessons from the Perennial Israeli-Palestinian War: The Big Picture
By Dr. Rodrigue Tremblay, emeritus professor of economics at the Université de Montréal and a former minister in the Quebec government
[False flag operations:] "The powers-that-be understand that to create the appropriate atmosphere for war, it is necessary to create within the general populace a hatred, fear or mistrust of others regardless of whether those others belong to a certain group of people or to a religion or a nation." James Morcan (1978- ), New Zealander-born actor, writer, producer and a resident of Australia, 2014.
"I know what America is. America is a thing you can move very easily, move it in the right direction. They won't get in our way." Benjamin Netanyahu (1949- ), Israeli Prime Minister (1996-1999), (2009-2021) and (2022- ), addressing Israeli settlers in the West Bank, (as quoted in 'Netanyahu: 'America is a thing you can move very easily'", The Washington Post, July 16, 2010.)
"We must remember that in time of war what is said on the enemy's side of the front is always propaganda, and what is said on our side of the front is truth and righteousness, the cause of humanity and a crusade for peace." Walter Lippmann (1889-1974), American journalist, (in 'Public Opinion', 1922).
“Those who want thwart the creation of a Palestinian state should support the strengthening of Hamas and the transfert of funds to Hamas.“ Benjamin Netanyahu (1949- ), Israeli Prime Minister, (during a meeting of the Likud party, in 2019).
Introduction
Nowadays, almost all wars, involving governments with access to enormous propaganda resources, are either deliberately provoked or simply the result of false flag operations, camouflaged under a veil of lies and fake news. — In time of war, all parties lie. —With the help of passive or complacent medias, not one distracted person in a hundred can see clearly what is really going on.
Rocket and missile clashes between Islamist Hamas and Israel, and atrocities and war crimes committed against civilians, are not new in that part of the world. The most recent outbreak of violence is, in reality, the continuation of a deep conflict, which is ongoing and which is entering into a new cycle of escalating violence.
Indeed, two years ago, in May 2021, serious riots took place inside the compound of al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem's Old City, which left hundreds of Palestinians and many police officers injured. What followed was an escalation of attacks between Israel and Hamas. The latter launched more than 1,000 rockets from the Gaza Strip towards Israel, while the Israeli army, in return, dropped a deluge of fire on the blockaded Gaza Strip, causing more than 150 Palestinian deaths and 10 deaths on the Israeli side.
Only six months ago, on April 5th and 6th, 2023, there were new violent clashes in Jerusalem when Israeli police raided again the al-Aqsa mosque, in the pursuit of "agitators" who had barricaded themselves inside.
It is therefore somewhat puzzling why so many observers were taken by surprise when the Hamas launched its rain of rockets on Israel, on Saturday, October 7, 2023, in an operation specifically called al-Aqsa Deluge.
Likewise, we can only remain perplexed when the Israeli government itself says it was taken by surprise, since its relations with the Palestinian populations have been extremely tense, particularly since 2021.
Nevertheless, the British Guardian and other medias published the official version according to which there was a "catastrophic failure of intelligence by Israel", regarding the offensive launched from Gaza against Israeli towns. Such an attack, it said, must have been in preparation for many months and "it is a mystery why Israeli intelligence appears to have had no idea it was coming."
Significantly, other media also reported that Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant (1958- ) stated that, "We will change the reality on the ground in Gaza." "What existed before will no longer be."
The same minister also declared on Monday, October 9, that he was imposing "a complete siege" on the Gaza Strip: "There will be no electricity, no food, no fuel supplies, everything is closed." Adding, "We are fighting human animals and we act accordingly"—forgetting that the Nazis described German Jews as 'subhumans' (Untermenschen), to justify genocide.
The Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu (1949- ), an ultra-Orthodox politician who favors "Eretz Israel", the "Greater Israel" of the Bible, proclaimed that Israel was at war and that the Palestinians would pay a heavy price.
How to make sense of all this?
How to explain that the Netanyahu Israeli government had no clue that the Hamas was planing an attack?
The central question is why and how the Israeli army and navy, which have imposed a tight land and sea blockade on everything entering the Gaza Strip since 2007, as well as the Mossad secret services, could not have been aware of what was coming?
Is this likely? Did someone deliberately close his eyes? It would seem crucial for the future to elucidate such a mystery.
The alternative explanation would be that we are possibly in the presence of a more or less voluntary laissez-faire attitude on the part of certain authorities, starting with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu himself, by not taking the necessary precautions to prevent an outbreak of military attacks by Hamas.
Why were warnings about an imminent attack ignored?
More fundamentally, perhaps, is how to interpret the report that Egypt's intelligence minister, General Abbas Kamel, called Netanyahu days before the Hamas attacks, advising him that islamist militants in Gaza were planning "something unusual, a terrible operation"?
The Egyptians were reportedly aghast at Netanyahu's passivity upon hearing the warning. "We repeatedly warned the Israelis that the situation had reached the point of explosion and would be very serious. But they took it lightly", said an Egyptian services official, as reported by the Times of Israel.
Such warnings were ignored and dismissed by Netanyahu's office as fake news! Even so, why did they not investigate them and prepare to deal with them, as a simple precaution?
What is more, the report that the Netanyahu government had been warned days before the Hamas attacks has been confirmed by the U.S. House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman, Representative Michael McCaul (R-Tex), who is privy to classified information.
The question thus arises: Has the Netanyahu government really been facing an unforeseen attack from Hamas, or are we rather in the presence of a war that has been somewhat facilitated, by omission or otherwise? In the latter case, it could be politically explosive for the Netanyahu government. It would, in fact, be much more than simple negligence.
Indeed, this would seem to be the case. According to a poll taken on Thursday, October 12, an overwhelming majority of 86% of Israelis believe their government and Netanyahu are to blame for the attacks and for the massacre that followed inside Israel. Besides, more than half of Israelis believe Netanyahu should resign.
This also seems to be the opinion of famous American investigative journalist, Seymour Hersh, who believes that Mr. Netanyahu will have to answer for his governance before the Israeli population and that his days in power could be numbered. The Israeli government has a preexisting plan to eradicate Hamas, raze Gaza and expel its population.
As in any other conflict, it is important to ask the question Cui bono? or, who ultimately benefits?
This 'new' deadly Israeli-Palestinian war, presented as a 'surprise', could well come at the right time for two politicians, Benjamin Netanyahu and Joe Biden (1946- ).
• On the one hand, the new hard-line coalition government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, elected at the end of 2022, is the most right-wing administration in Israeli history. Indeed, Netanyahu has allied himself with far-right and anti-Palestinian Zionist groups, which propose the annexation of part of the West Bank, occupied by Israel since 1967.
And, to make its intentions clear, the new coalition government's first guiding principle, published on Wednesday, December 28, 2022, declared that "the Jewish people have an exclusive and unquestionable right to all areas of the land of Israel".
On the other hand, Netanyahu provoked huge anti-government demonstrations in his country when he pushed through a judicial overhaul to favor the religious extremists who are members of his coalition government.
• For his part, President Joe Biden has often said, here and here, that he considers himself to be a 'Zionist'. He has declared that Netanyahu has been a "friend for decades", and he has pledged that U.S. support for Israel was "set in stone and unwavering".
However, Biden is currently low in the polls, both because of his poor record and for his advanced age.
Indeed, one year before the American presidential elections, the presumptive Democratic candidate has little chance of being re-elected, despite the legal troubles of his presumed Republican opponent, Donald Trump, or anyone else that the Republicans may choose as their candidate.
Only a large-scale war involving the United States could possibly change the situation and bail out Biden politically, allowing him to run as Commander-in-Chief.
Indeed, Joe Biden did not waste any time, at the start of the new Israeli-Palestinian conflict, to promise an additional military aid of $14.3 billion to Israel, beyond the $3.8 billion annually paid to the country.
Moreover, during his trip to Israel, on Wednesday, October 18, he is reported to have privately given Netanyahu the green light for an Israeli armed invasion of the Gaza Strip.
However, such a neocon-inspired and extremely biased one-sided foreign policy is not without creating increased frictions within the U.S. State Department.
The added complications of natural gas under the sea next to the Gaza Strip
To show how complex the situation is in that part of the world, there exists a large natural gas deposit off the coast of the Gaza Strip, which could greatly profit the Palestinians. The exploitation of this gas field, called Gaza marine, has been the subject of negotiations between the Israeli government, the Palestinian Authority and Egypt. All this necessarily also involves the Hamas group, a competitor to the Palestinian Authority, the latter being under the control of the Fatah party.
Future events should make things clearer concerning the behind the scenes objectives of both sides, in this umpteenth Israeli-Palestinian war, which seems to resurface each time the situation reaches an explosive level.
Conclusions
A first important geopolitical and moral lesson emerges here, and it is the enormous human disaster resulting from those repeated wars between Israelis and Palestinians. When misguided, visionless, incompetent or dishonest leaders allow a political problem to fester, many innocent people pay for their carelessness and irresponsibility.
A second major observation is that some leaders, in a position to do so, are currently doing next to nothing to strengthen international peace institutions, but seem rather to enjoy stirring up conflicts around the world.
Third, it must be said that it is not only where there are journalists and photographers that atrocities and war crimes are committed. Agressions, whether consisting in launching missiles or dropping bombs on populations, kill and massacre people (men, women and children), indifferently, on one side as much as the other. They are both immoral.
Fourth, barbarous and indiscriminate atrocities, which are carried out with modern weapons against civilian populations, are not only illegal under international law, they are unacceptable under basic humanitarian principles.
Fifth, the worst and everlasting human conflicts seem to be those that are fought within the context of a religious war.
Finally, states and terrorist organizations that do not respect international law create problems for themselves and represent an existential threat to civilization and to world peace.
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International economist Dr. Rodrigue Tremblay is the author of the book about morals "The code for Global Ethics, Ten Humanist Principles" of the book about geopolitics "The New American Empire", and the recent book, in French, "La régression tranquille du Québec, 1980-2018". He holds a Ph.D. in international finance from Stanford University.